[Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

Mon Sep 20 04:25:41 UTC 2010

  On 9/19/2010 8:21 PM, Robert S. Horning wrote:
> On 09/19/2010 06:52 PM, wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
>> On 20/09/2010 00:26, Robert S. Horning wrote:
>>> I'm not entirely sure how accurate this is, so I'm just making a raw
>>> conjecture here that is completely unsupported by facts other than
>>> perhaps by general observations:
>>>
>>> Is it possible that the problem with the humanities-related articles on
>>> Wikipedia has more to do with the lack of an existing culture of
>>> "copyleft" or public domain collaboration?  It has taken literally
>>> decades of effort that go back even a couple of decades earlier of
>>> similar efforts to put together what is today the "open source movement"
>>> that has produced things like Linux, the GNU tools, and software like
>>> Apache.  Wikipedia is a product of this environment too, where many of
>>> those who have participated in developing open source software don't
>>> hesitate to at least add a couple of paragraphs to Wikipedia.
>> Linux, Apache, and the GNU Tools were the work of a handful of people.
>> Others have come along and added a bit here or there or fixed something
>> or other but I bet that if I were to look at the core source code for
>> Emacs to day it wouldn't be that much different from when I worked on it
>> 20 years ago.
>>
>> Software changes either work or they don't and any change ought to be
>> testable to demonstrate that it adds some new feature or fixes something
>> broken. But there is a problem with software changes in that most
>> changes tend to degrade the overall quality of the product in some way.
>> Overtime, unless someone steps in and does a rewrite the code becomes a
>> mess, and it happened one change at a time.
>>
>> The same is true of wikipedia articles, edit by edit, they tend to
>> degrade. There comes a point when they are 'done' and they knob
>> polishers need to be told to bugger off and leave them alone.
> While I appreciate extending the analogy, you are missing my point
> here.  Geeks have been used to the philosophy of collaboratively written
> documents (including software) for quite some time and this was
> ingrained into at least a significant sub-set of technologically minded
> people for quite some time.  It is this culture of sharing with one
> another and having no stigma of sharing your work and letting
> potentially millions of others poke at your work, tweak it or even trash it.
>
> It isn't just this software but the tens of thousands of other
> applications that have been built and shared with the world.  Wikipedia
> was formed from this community where sharing this kind of information
> was even a second nature.  Indeed it has been encouraged for people of a
> technical nature to share the information they know with one another.
>
> What I'm trying to point out is that a similar sub-culture within the
> community that works on arts and literature is such a minority that you
> might as well not really pay attention to it.  Certainly academia isn't
> embracing Wikipedia for multiple reasons.  That may be part of it as
> those in an academic situation tend to be a minority in technical fields
> but tend to dominate those with studies in the humanities.  They are
> also hesitant to work collaboratively and even when that happens it
> tends to be very small groups... not groups of dozens or hundreds
> involved.  A paper on physics may have hundreds of co-authors, but a
> similar academic paper on Greek Mythology may only have a couple authors
> or a single author.  This is a cultural difference that can't be
> understated.
I think you two may be talking about issues that overlap as much as they 
are distinct. Perhaps technically-minded people are more connected to 
the culture of sharing the way we do it. But I think the "it either 
works or it doesn't, and figuring out which is straightforward" notion 
of coders could also factor into the equation, as illustrated by your 
hypothetical physics and mythology papers. I would expect the more 
technical paper to be oriented more towards facts and scientific 
hypotheses, things that can be evaluated and proven to "work". Even 
though it may require highly specific expertise which not that many 
people beyond the paper authors possess, it can be approached in a 
similar fashion.

With mythology or other humanities subjects, the academic paper may rely 
on some facts or things that are very nearly facts, assumptions that 
have universal acceptance though they may not be provable in the usual 
scientific sense. But I would expect the paper to contain a great deal 
of analysis that consists primarily of opinion, conjecture, and 
speculation. Highly informed opinion, conjecture, and speculation, mind 
you, and worthy of respect according to the thoughtfulness and expertise 
of the authors. Yet it may have difficulty establishing much in the way 
of new facts, or even ideas that may eventually come to be assumed as facts.

There are some related consequences that have relevance for Wikipedia as 
well. One is that it may be harder to collaborate on works that appear 
to involve endorsing views of which you are unsure, hence fewer authors 
signing on to a paper and a greater tendency toward a "lone wolf" 
approach. I know that personally I feel some slight hesitation when I 
edit just a section of an article that I might be seen as responsible 
for endorsing the whole (not just that there's no undetected vandalism 
or errors, but that the article is well-informed and balanced overall). 
Another issue is that the humanities approach to analytical writing is 
harder to adapt to a neutral point of view, because that's not really 
what you're encouraged to strive for. When writing student papers, I 
recall on so many occasions hearing exhortations to make an argument, 
take a stand, reach a definite conclusion. With more and more expertise 
behind it, that may be great for stimulating academic debate or 
advancing particular ideas, but Wikipedia wants that only at a 
considerable distance.

These dynamics play out in concerns about article "ownership" manifested 
in one direction, or in what David Gerard likes to call Wikipedia's 
house style in the other direction. Another manifestation is that it's 
probably a bigger challenge for experts in the humanities, broadly 
speaking, to persuasively overcome objections from the uninformed. It's 
easier for someone to be obtuse and stubbornly fight ideas that are 
generally accepted, something that for scientific questions shows up 
primarily in the biggest-picture contexts where no one expert can 
demonstrate or defend every last conclusion, topics like evolution or 
global warming.

--Michael Snow